Making a favicon.ico

Posted by Miles Evans

Here is a quick tip. If you are writing for RSS, and who isn’t these days, you really should take a moment to make a favicon.ico. From a branding perspective it looks professional to see the icon in your reader/favorites/address bar. It’s also a good idea to not fill up your web logs with failed attempts to find a missing favicon.ico.

Having said that Photoshop does not save in .ICO format out of the box. Luckily the cool guys at telegraphics have an open source plugin that does just that. It works in Elements and Paintshop Pro as well. Simply save this file into your Photoshop/plug-ins/file formats folder and you are good to go.

A favicon.ico file should be 16x16 pixels and be saved at the absolute root of your website. If you have no artistic skills you might find some inspiration by searching Google images.

You can also force your a browser to find your favicon in a different location by using the following code in your header:

<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="https://www.example.com/icons/someicon.ico">

If you are on a MAC you might check out Zonic’s IconLab.

Posted Jun 27, 2006 at 05:34 AM | Permalink | Trackback URL | Del.icio.us | DIGG!